| ABC Dog School |
| HELP THESE DOGS |
| Tether Troubles |
| copyright 2009 Carole J Sulser |
| Autumn 2008, and I'm under seige from loose dogs and puppies. They're letting the cream-colored pup run loose. I call her, Creamy, for identification purposes. One day I hear a ruckus and see her harrassing a cat. Everyone is excited about it. The two-tone tan dog (I'll call him, Brownie,) can get in and out of his pen under the fence now, which is about a foot off the ground. He's outside the pen having a conniption. I check a few minutes later, and he's in the corner of the pen, climbing the fence! Now he's hanging out over the fence, barking and trying to get out. He's teetering there, but not going over. I don't think there's enough cable. He'll break his neck or hang himself. Finally he gives it up and gets back down inside the pen. What keeps these dogs alive?!!! One day I see this same dog caught on the bottom of the fence. He's going back and forth under the fence, struggling to get free. His cable is all balled up, and his collar looks pretty tight. I'm worried he will twist his collar up tight enough to strangle. I go look for a phone number to call, and when I get back, he's loose from the fence. Another close call. Star, the matron of the pack, is in a pen with the dog house outside of it. This gives her more room and the door faces east, away from the wind. But, she can jump on top of the box, and spends a lot of time there. When she jumps off the side of it, she can't get back up and is stuck there without water or shelter. Sometimes it looks like she is about to topple over the back end of it, in which case, she probably wouldn't have enough rope. This could be fixed by fencing the area above the box so she can't get up on it. The owner would rather let her kill herself, I guess. One day Star, being tethered too short to get to her box, tries to climb out the back side of her pen, and gets caught on the fence. I see her struggling there, up on the fence, and then she gets her hind feet back to the ground. More struggling and she manages to get down, but her rope is pretty short. So now she tries to climb out the side of the pen and gets caught again! She's standing there on her hind feet wriggling this way and that, but she can't get down. I call the dog pound to see if they'll make the call. They need to know about this stuff anyway. By the time the owner gets out there, the dog is down again. She can see the rope is caught on the fence, so she goes around back and tries to get it loose. Then she hauls Star over the fence. I wonder where she's taking her, but the next time I look, Star is in the pen again. The Yellow Dog, as I call him, is on a chain now, but there is also a tangled up cable attached to his neck, partially wound around the chain, with several loops flying about, dragging the ground, and getting in the way of his feet. What would be the purpose of that? A week later, this cable, and several snaps, will be problematic when I find myself trying to seperate him and another dog. See The Big Dogfight, for that story! When Bubblegum gets loose, which is almost daily, he has a conglomeration of tethers hanging from his collar. Today he was in my garage drinking water, and was wearing two tight collars, with two ropes hanging from them, so frayed they looked like binder twine. If they can't afford suitable tethers, why do they keep letting females get pregnant? He recently was tethered in Star's pen, with her, and the two dogs were getting all tangled up. Neither one could get into the box. Then he was moved to the box that has no back in it, and got tangled up with Brownie. Then he was tied on the other side of the box where he and Chloe could get tangled up. I have seen two dogs tangled up on several occasions, because they were tied too close together, and I feared there would be a fight or a strangling. The two spotted males from 2005, are on very short cables, which means they don't get to move around much. And then there was the tan dog caught on the fence for over an hour, as told on the previous page. I recently saw a black and tan dog, who is in the habit of climbing up onto the top of a chain link pen, stuck between two fences, and unable to reach the ground at all. Fortunately for him, his owner was home and feeding dogs at the time, so he wasn't there long. What I worry about, is when will someone get into a fix like this and no one comes to the rescue? Maybe this has already happened. There are a few dogs I haven't seen for a long time. The times I have seen dogs with their cables wrapped around trees and unable to get into a box, are quite numerous. I have seen them sleeping on the ground, in the rain and in the cold. The Yellow Dog cried all night when it was extremely cold and he'd been tied in the trees where the spotted pup suffered so long.. I don't know why he was there, but I'm sure he spent the night on the ground. No one went out to help him. |
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| Brownie and Bubblegum in tandem, with tangled tethers. Their cables are fastened to the fence about six feet apart! They want to follow the hot chick, Creamy. |
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